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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Gerrit Smith to Dr. Cuyler : temperance and civil government.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

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Call number: Smith 545

GERRIT SMITH TO DR. CUYLER

TEMPERANCE AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT

Peterboro January 1 1868.

Rev. Dr. T. L. Cuyler,

Brooklyn, N. Y.,

MY DEAR SIR,

I am moved to write a letter on Temperance and Civil Government. Your deep interest in these subjects, especially in Temperance, makes it very proper, and your being the son of one of my College-Classmates makes it very pleasant, to address it to yourself.

The importance of the Case of Temperance cannot be overrated. Of all men the drunkard is the most miserable: and one drunkard in a family makes the whole family miserable. The property and life of the sober are in constant peril at the hands of the drunken. Then, too, the "temperate drinkers" compose a more injurious class than do the drunkards in number. 2d they, and they only, furnish the recruits of the ever-rapidly-wasting army of drunkards. 3d whilst the drunkard deceives no one, but exposes to all his mental and moral incapacity for the responsibilities, trusts and duties of life, the "temperate drinker," on the contrary, being, as yet, but in the early and unobvious stages of drunkenness, deceives all and has the confidence of all in his various relations and employments. His brain is disturbed - but not so as to attract observation. His faculties are not in their natural or normal state: but, as this is not seen, his judgement, moral sense and self-possession are still confided in; and from no employment however difficult or delicate, and from no office in the State however high, and from none in the Church however holy, does his drinking of liquor exclude him. The disturbance of his brain is such, as renders him, in some circumstances, more dangerous than if he drank deeper. If not too egotistical. I would draw one illustration of this from my own case. When I was a young man, my business required me to go here and there - and I was, generally, my own driver. I would, especially in cold weather, stop, now and then, at a tavern for a little liquor. Even to-day, after this long time - long indeed, as it is upward of forty years since I took to the Total Abstinence-Life-Boat - I distinctly recall how, in my exhilarated and careless state of mind, I would, on resuming the reins, flourish my whip and dash on. My hazard had, probably, been less, had I drunk enough to dull myself. This part of my dram-drinking did much toward making me so apprehensive of peril to the passengers from the dram-drinking of stage and engine drivers. Such rashness and recklessness, as came from mine, must come, in a greater or less degree, from theirs only. But the preternatural excitement, produced by intoxicating drinks, unfits, to some extent, for every calling and for every relation and duty of life. Under that excitement

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not the lawyer nor the statesman, not the physician nor the preacher, is entirely himself.

When we reflect that there are a million of drunkards in our land, and that the vast majority of our men and women, alas, and of our youths also, are "temperate drinkers," and that no very small share of these "temperate drinkers" being such upon medical authority, are, therefore, deaf to arguments against their habit, it is not strange that our sadness should be great. Nor, is this sadness at all diminished, but, on the contrary, greatly increased, by the efforts to make us a wine-drinking people. American wine may never be cheap enough to become a drink of the American masses. But if it should, it would increase not sobriety but drunkenness. Not only would the drinkers of other liquors drink it also, but it would be the means of cursing the land with an additional class of drunkards. I do not forget that some of the American travellers in France and Italy see few or no drunkards. But others of them report vast numbers of drunkards in those wine countries : and we must credit the latter, if only on the principle that positive testimony outweighs that which is negative. Wine countries, as well as others, abound in drunkards. It is true that in warm countries there is not that craving for the strongest drinks, which there is in cold ones. But both in warm and cold countries drunkenness will be a prevailing vice, until the conviction shall become general that intoxicating liquors are not fit for a beverage, and this conviction shall be made effective by a wise and religious concern for the health of the physical, intellectual and moral faculties.

The Temperance Societies have done good. But the chief thing for which I took up my pen to write you this letter was to ask if, in your judgement, they have not erred greatly in proposing and resolving, as they have thousands of times, now with more and now with less directness and emphasis, to carry their Cause into politics. British reformers break out of their political parties in order to achieve a political and final triumph for their reforms. In this wise, they accomplished the abolition of slavery and the repeal of the corn laws and other called-for changes. In this wise too, they will succeed in their present purpose to shut up the dramshop, to obtain manhood suffrage, and to dissolve the connexion between Church and State. British reformers never rest until they have carried their Cause in Parliament. But so it is, that, for the sake of no Reform, will Americans take a final or unconditional leave of their political parties. It sis true that, occasionally, they show themselves capable of voting for some Reform. But their doing so is only a political spirt - and, sooner or later, and generally very soon, they fall

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back into their parties, and vote, as before, against this very Reform. Some forty years ago, freemasons murdered a man. Their fraternity was able to shield them. It was too strong for the laws. The ties and sympathies of one of these great and horridly-oath-bound Secret Societies generate a sense of obligation between the members so strong, as often to make the impartial administration of justice quite impossible. Scores of thousands of voters were, because of this murder, so incensed against masonry, as to attack it at the polls. But the attack was only a political spirt. In a few years, the anti-masons were back again in their old parties, and in full political fellowship with the masons. The fraternity was not longer disturbed; and it seems to be now quite as strong as ever. Ten or fifteen years farther on, and there was a political spirt at slavery also: and, in this case too, there were scores of thousands in the spirt. But, in a very few years, all save a handful of them had gone back to their pro-slavery parties. The Garrisons and Philipses - noble men! - unsustained by abolitionists at the polls - ay, counteracted by the votes of even abolitionists for pro-slavery candidates - could, with all their power to enlighten, accomplish but little. Slavery was never so strong, as when the slaveholders, in 1860, set about demolishing it. It cannot be said of them, that they "builded better than they knew." - but it can be, that they "demolished better than they new." There was, too, a political spirt at land-monopoly. A party was organized to vote against the giant evil - but its members, unable to resist the attractions of their old parties, soon went back to them.

Political action against Intemperance there has frequently been in many parts of the country - but ut was not persisted in. It was, no where, much more than a spirt. Temperance men would, for one or two Elections, confine their vote, as usual, for Rum candidates. Scarcely ever has it been found possible to bring them up into an earnest conflict with their Rum parties. To illustrate this, let me refer to the memorable Temperance failure in this State in 1858. In that year, which was midway between Presidential Elections, and in which there was nothing special to glue men to their parties, a large number of earnest friends of Temperance met and nominated a State Temperance ticket. They were at first, confident of getting fifty thousand votes for it. But they soon found that they had to encounter the opposition of the great body of the Temperance men. Officers and agents of the New York State Temperance Society went over the State opposing the Temperance ticket, and electioneering for one of the two Rum tickets. The highest vote on the Temperance ticket was only between five and six thousand: and, this too, notwithstanding presses were employed and lectures sent forth to gain votes for it. I was one of these lecturers. In many a County, which I visited, I did not see half a dozen, who would vote our ticket; and in a large and populous County on the East bank of the Hudson I did not see even one, who was willing to be guilty of such voting. The Election over, and we Temperance-voting men were, everywhere, laughed at, and by none more loudly than by our Temperance brethren, for the folly and failure of our attempt to get Temperance brethren, for the folly and failure of our attempt to get Temperance men to vote for, instead of against, their professed principles. Thus ended as earnest an endeavor

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as the world ever saw to induce the friends of Temperance to carry their Cause into politics. More than ever did I then feel that Temperance men cannot be trusted to vote for Temperance. More than ever did I then feel that the New York State Temperance Society is a stupendous deception - the servant of one of the Rum Parties, instead of the servant of Temperance. More than ever did I then feel how impudent it is for this Society - this mere tail of the kite, now of the Republican, and formerly of the Whig Party - to call upon Democrats to come into its membership.

Since the year 1858, I have attended but very few Temperance Meetings. I did what I could in those I attended to persuade my hearers to consecrate their ballots to the shutting up of the dramshops. But all in vain. The most, that could be obtained, was some several or vague Resolution in behalf of helping Temperance by political means. Surely, no more evidence is needed than every year brings to us, that American reformers are of too sleazy a texture to be relied on to sustain by their votes even the most important and precious of their reforms. The proud Temperance men of New England have shown us, that even they cannot be relied on to persist in political action for the Cause of Temperance.

The Temperance Societies should, certainly, speak no longer as if they meant to stand by their Cause at the polls. They are conscious that they mean no such thing. Do they not harm themselves and harm their Cause by such hypocrisy? How much better for the both that they should honestly admit that this degree of faithfulness to a reform is not to be expected from American reformers. We Temperance men should deal fairly and frankly with the public in this respect: - and, whilst, we can safely promise to continue to preach and pray against Rum, we should not hesitate to tell it aloud, that we reserve to ourselves the right to vote for it. What if we shall be laughed at for thus giving our hands to help Temperance? - our work to the one and only our words to the other? - we, surely, can better afford to be laughed at for our honesty than to be scorned and loathed, as we now are, for our hypocrisy. I beg that, if only for decency's sake, nothing more be said in our Temperance Meetings about sustaining our Cause at the polls.

A great while ago, I noticed that the Temperance men no longer apologize for their voting Rum tickets. Nay, the offenders in their eyes are they, who are so green and fanatical, as to vote Temperance tickets. The kindest word I have received from them was where, in his letter to me, an officer of the New York State Temperance Society, all unconscious of any wrong in his anti-Temperance voting, assures me that he thinks none the worse of me for my tenacity at the point of Temperance voting! The meaning, perhaps, is that he forgives me!

The Temperance men have a standing excuse for voting against Temperance. I should rather say, a standing reason, since they feel no need of being excused. This standing reason is: "There is a crisis, just now, in the affairs of the country!" The "crisis" means, simply, that, at every recurring Election, there is a something, which makes it more pleasant for Temperance men to vote a Rum Ticket than a Temperance Ticket. I notice that the New York State Temperance Society is to meet in Utica, the present month. Its leading men

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will, of course, be there. It is not necessary to go there to know what they will do. They will talk solemnly, and pray fervently against the dramshop, without so much as one of them meaning to vote otherwise than for it. They are as conscious that they are playing a game as were the ancient Augurs of the trickery of Augury. Nevertheless, by force of long practice and great skill, they are able, on such occasions, to maintain an air of perfect seriousness, and to restrain themselves, as those Augurs could not, from laughing in each other's faces.

I often think that Americans will never bring their votes to the help of Temperance, until they shall have essentially changed their views of the office of Civil Government. My ever insisting that the protection of persons and property constitutes the one legitimate work of Government, is, perhaps, one of the many follies of my life. But, whether a folly or not, quite certain is it, that, were Government thus confined, its one work would be thoroughly done. The dramshop, that most fruitful of all the sources of peril to person and property, would quickly disappear. As it is crazing or maddening liquors only, that make the drinker perilous to the persons and possessions of others, I have long held that it would, perhaps, be wrong for Government to prohibit the sale of lager beer. If, as I learn from very many intelligent sources, this drink but dulls or stupefies, instead of maddening, then the sale of it, no more than the eating of too heavy a dinner, should be no sumptuary laws, there should, of course, be no laws to hinder men from getting drinks, which do not make then dangerous to others. I scarcely need add that my own judgement is against using as a beverage any alcoholic liquors. Lager beer is bad in itself, and it leads to worse drinks.

The dramshop is the great manufactory of madmen and murderers. From it go out a very large share of those, who are wrought up by its fiery liquors to burn and kill. More than three-fourths of the frequent murders in the City of New York can be traced to these liquors. The dramshop, I might also say, is the great manufactory of paupers; and, in this wise, does it impose the heaviest tax, which sober industry has to bear. I need not add, that, along with all this measureless evil of the dramshop, there comes not one particle of good. Quick, indeed, would Government, had it naught else to do but to protect person and property, sweep away the dramshop. As I have already intiminated, its concerning and mingling itself with so many interests and occupations quite foreign to its province, and its consequently neglecting its one duty, is the great reason why Government leaves person and property so largely unprotected - unprotected even from the sale of maddening drinks - a sale by which, more than by all things else, they are endangered and damaged.

No people should suffer Government to own them. But every people should require their Government to be their servant, and their servant for nothing else than to protect them from being jostled by each other and from foreign aggressions. In France Government has come to own the people by their allowing, ay inviting, it to mix itself up with all their affairs: - and, just to the extent that our people are guilty of this mistake, do their Governments own them.

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Government is busy with Tariffs. It should have nothing to do with them - though, I confess, that I strongly sympathize with the desire to save transportation by bringing, as far as is consistent, the producer and consumer together, and with the desire to develope American resources and promote American industry. By the way, the American Institute, of which Horace Greeley is the worthy President, will work better (if not so far) to this end than all Tariffs. Happy the day, when there shall be no Custom Houses to corrupt their inmates and those, who have to do with them! Happy the day, when the cost of Government shall be defrayed by direct taxation - for not until then will there be either a frugal or an honest Government!

Government is busy with railroads and canals. It should have nothing to do with either, except as they are called for by national defence or national safety. The Great Road to the Pacific and a canal around the Falls of the Niagara River may be admitted to fall within this exception. The Governmental ownership of the Erie Canal makes it a stream of corruption through the Government and through the State far broader and deeper than the Canal itself. Is it said that corruption would attend its ownership by individuals or a corporation? The answer to this is, that all other corruption is as nothing compared with that of the Government. An uncorrupt and incorruptible Government is needed to restrain and punish corruption amongst its people. In a word, a Government is needed, whose character shall make it, not an encouragement, but "a terror" to evil doers, and whose hand shall be heavy on all crimes and frauds.

Government busies itself with making gifts to this and that sectarian or other institution. It has no right to make any gifts. The people can give away their money as they please; but Government has no right to give it away for them. In virtue of its obligation to protect person and property, it must build prisons for criminals and asylums for the insane. But with such institutions of love and mercy as those for the deaf and dumb and blind, it has nothing to do. Individual charity must be relied on for all these - and when, once, Government gets our of its way, it will not be relied on in vain.

Government is busy with School. It should no more meddle with them than with Churches. With us it has ceased to meddle with Churches - and churches are but Schools. It will yet cease to meddle with all other Schools. The old notion that Government must have the people in leading strings - a notion not at all strange in the benighted past, when Government was so much more enlightened than the people - cannot linger much longer in this age of popular intelligence. It is high time that Government were looked to, only for the wise and faithful application of its protecting brute force - high time that it were not looked to as a father and director in family affairs - even in the education of children, that delicate and sacred part of family affairs. Parents have the right to choose the course of their children's education; and they should not be compelled to support a school shaped and controlled by Government. How hard, for instance, for our Roman

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Catholic citizens, who so strongly prefer their own Schools, to be compelled to support the Common School! They are as clearly oppressed here by our Governmental system of education, as Roman Catholics are in Ireland by the Governmental Church System. What a shameful spectacle! - our Roman Catholics establishing and supporting Schools for their own children, and then compelled, in their comparative poverty, to held sustain Schools for the education of the Protestant children!

But it is said that the children of poor parents would go uneducated, were it not for this compulsory system of education. So, too, it was feared that our churches would go down, if they were left exclusively to voluntary support. That the gifts, in the last year, to the American Methodist Church amounted to several millions of dollars, is amongst the proofs that our Churches need no forced aid. Nor do our Schools. Let Government withdraw its hand and its compelled held from them, and, very quickly, would the people, and this, too, without counting amongst them the Peabodys and the Cornells, far more than supply the lack. Who, when he sees the millions of money and the thousands of teachers going into the South for the educating of the white and black poor, can doubt that the voluntary and not the compulsory system of education is the true one for our country! It is unnecessary on this occasion to go into an argument to show, that compulsion, in the cases we have been speaking of, is at war with human rights and the spirit of our free institutions. But you would dislike to see, here and there, a miserly man escaping from his fair share of the burden of educating the children of the poor. So would I. Let them escape, however. No small proportion of them would be reached by the shaming and converting influences of the example of their just and generous neighbors. Both Republicanism and Christianity go more for winning than compelling.

High, indeed, is the duty to educate the poor : but immeasurably higher is the duty to diminish the number of the poor. Make Government what it should be, and there would be few or no poor for either Government or the public charity to provide for. Government or the public charity to provide for. Government is the great oppressor and multiplier of the poor. In many parts of the world, it authorizes the buying and selling of them, and provides that their children and children's children shall be as poor and wretched and entirely uneducated as their parents. What a horrible oppression and multiplication of the poor is this! All over the world, Government authorizes land-monopoly, and shuts out the poor from the soil - from that soil to which all men have as clear and equal and God0given a right as to the light and air. How little poverty there would be, were this right defended, instead of ignored, by Government! Government oppresses the poor by unjust modes of taxation. How cruel, for instance, to impose the same rate of taxation upon the little property of the poor man, every penny of which he needs for the maintenance of his family, as is

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ed upon the surplus wealth of the rich man - ay, upon that surplus wealth which, in time of war, the poor are the chief dependence for defending! The man with a family, who is worth but a thousand dollars, should go untaxed. Governments crush the poor by wars. Were Governments just, there would be no wars. Our recent War grew out of flagrant and murderous injustice on the part of Government to the poorest of the poor. But, worse than all, Government legalizes the dramshop, and in this wise, not only multiplies the poor beyond limit, but the poor, who are of the basest and most miserable type of poverty. The people need to be undeceived in regard to the actual course and character of Government. Unmasked, it would be seen to be, not the friend, but the worst enemy of the poor. Such an enemy it will not ceases to be, until it shall be driven back from its usurpations of the proper work of the people to its narrow province of protecting them - in other words, until the people shall be left to do their own work, and Government be confined to its work of protecting them in their work. With us, Government has, chiefly by the poor. But it deserves no such reputation. It is the great oppressor and great enemy of the poor.

Let me not be charged with the inconsistency of denying to Government all part in moral and religious institutions and enterprises, and of yet claiming that it should undertake to promote the cause of Temperance. I make not such claim. I repeat that I require Government but to protect person and property. To do this faithfully and thoroughly it must necessarily shut up the dramshop: - and it is true, that, in shutting it up, it will help the cause of Temperance immensely, ay indispensably. Nevertheless, it will help it but incidentally. The protection of person and property will, still, remain the one object of Government, whatever the interest, which may be incidently helped or harmed by the prosecution of that direct and only object of Government.

I close my already too long letter with wishing you and yours: "A happy New Year!" I have a strong hope, that you are all happy - for, as there is no rum beneath your roof, you are all, so far, secure from, at least, one, and the most prolific source of unhappiness. But, alas, how many a dwelling is, to-day, one of darkness instead of light, sorrow instead of joy, because there is a drunkard in it! And, alas, too, there are, today, tens of thousands of families of "temperance drinkers!" The viper in them is not yet full-grown. But in many of them he will be, when some one or two or three more New Years have come round: and then will the happiness of those many families be stung to death. "At the last, it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder."

With great regard,

your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.